I find a lot of beauty and life and encouragement in the small and simple things these days.
As one of my 2014 goals, I decided to spend more time cooking. Now to be fair, i haven't actually cooked a lot of anything, but i have spent a lot of time looking at cook books and magazines and online eating blogs as if i was that committed to carve time out of my days to actually salt and pepper and prep and bake and make. Its strange though because i find a peace and solace and reassurance that life will be fine by simply looking at food. So as it is Sunday, my day off and a day of rest, I am going to make some soda bread...if i don't spend too much time on my computer.
The simplicity of food and cooking and taking time has lead to really looking how i can simplify the other areas of my life that feel like they are sucking me dry. In the last years i have had a pretty interesting anxiety complex which transcends most areas of my life and most of my writing. My view of the past, my view of my job and normal job related challenges, seasons and weeks of dating and seasons and weeks of singleness, trying to find purpose and meaning in the everyday of being in the middle of my twenties when everything feels and looks unsettled.
I've now been in therapy for a little over two months. Its another thing to check off my 2014 list - lighten up and live with five events i never thought i would do. There is something highly helpful about having someone ask a series of 'right' questions pertaining to different areas of my life. It's incredibly reassuring to hear from someone else that is completely objective in your life "you are not crazy" and that she can see the hand of loving Jesus strong and surely. It's been a beautiful time of continued healing and release, learning to let go of the need for control over my life and circumstances.
She lead me through a prayer time on my lest session that is going to sound quite bizarre - it was called conception to birth prayer. essentially, she prayed over each month of my development as a baby using scripture - mostly psalms 139. Throughout the months she prayed against any strongholds of fear or anxiety and prayed for the freedom in Jesus to flow through every area of my life. Since that session a week ago, i have experienced a freedom from the panic and anxiety i have felt for so many months pertaining to my future, or perceived lack of it. I have felt a little more fullness, a little more excitement and hope towards whatever is ahead, far more certain that I have purpose and that this season of nothingness is extremely significant. More sure that i belong to Him, that I'm wanted and delighted in. A little more satisfied in this season of work and growth and cooking (even if it's a bit imaginative) and training for my marathon. A little more willingly to take myself less seriously, and to drop a few highly placed expectations.
I can't describe this very well, but its like the Lord has literally picked me up and is moving me the right direction. It's not because i did anything right, but probably more because i was going the wrong direction. I feel more loved by the Lord Jesus in these last weeks than i ever have. I feel more hopeful and ceratin of an unforeseeable future.
I know this seems like a leap from all of that, but another huge step in release and freedom has been a conscious decision to quit Bridgetown, the church ive been attending downtown Portland since i moved here. It's given me a chance to step away and evaluate what the Lord would have for me and ask of me in this area of my life. I think this is a season of letting Jesus really fill me - not church or church activities, or church people per say. It's a season where I shouldn't be giving or pouring out. This is a season to really let the Lord refresh all the brokenness and revive the dryness in my soul. I love the church, but i've never been one to be a sideline church goer, and it's been so painful these last months to sit in church where i'm told from the pulpit to give or prepare to give and not be in a place that I can. Giving myself permission to take a step back from it all has been so life giving. Its almost allowed me to really concentrate on the relationships that are already around me, and to concentrate on rest.
I write these things today in the middle of my day off in which I conveniently have no plans or commitments. I have fuzzy socks over painted toes, hair up and pajamas on. It's 4pm in the afternoon, and i'm listening to Phil Wickham, and about to draw a bath with a book written by a woman whose walked with Jesus for a very long time. She made it, and she's sharing her reflections with me. The ingredients for soda bread scatter the counter, and the dishes from my lunch are unscrubbed in the sink. This is me at rest, this is me being refilled, this is me at peace and me at joy. This is me taking a quiet moment away from the chaos of my job, and chaos of all the relationships that need to be checked up on. The apartment is quiet and lonely and completely fabulous.
Today i am happy. Nothing overly special, just a day that I'm more sure the Lord is for me, that He is greater than whats against me, that He delights in me, and that my life has purpose.
This is me healing. This is me knowing change is coming. This is Jesus working tangibly in my life.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
To 2014 and 25
Not sure if this is true of others experience, but turning 25 has felt like a severe replay of puberty. A looming state of heavy, heavy, heavy, confusion, a body that is adjusting to the training it takes to run 26 miles, hormones and emotions rampant and wild. Phases of freedom and security, phases of volatile insecurity. Although this time in life is exciting and liberating to what life looked like in previous seasons, without question, the last several years have been the hardest and most miserable I've ever known.
Navigating the job world and the dating world and the self-discovery/self-esteem world was something I wasn't ever really prepared for. Mostly because it had always come easily and/or I had no idea how easy I really had it. But now, it's just been......well.....its certainly been something. Perhaps one day, when I'm on the other side of this season of life, I will have some wisdom and insight worth sharing.
As a woman who has tried and succeeded and failed and felt close and felt a million miles in her relationship with the Lord, many of those extremes experienced in the last couple weeks, I forced my self to get away, to take a timeout. Away from a job that seems hopeless, away from examining a future that feels hopeless, away from myself which lives out hopeless....just away and permission to not carry the weight so personally, so closely. So I tossed some clothes and a candle and half a bottle of my favorite sauvignon cabernet, and headed to the beach. A little b&b with my deck overlooking the ocean and a Jacuzzi tub - I was in great shape. I journaled, read, cried, journaled some more, watched a movie, napped, walked the beach to the point my face was wind burned, slept, and took 4 baths all within a 16 hour span. On a complete side note, bloated starfish totally freak me out. All that to say, it was the first time in a while that I had taken so much time to myself, and I discovered that the Lord had so much to say.
I'm relearning how to be alone. It doesn't come natural to me anymore. There is a deep fear within me who loudly suggests that to not be intentional about moving forward means that you are moving backwards, failing, and causing inevitable regrets down the road. The fear is intrinsically attached to my identity - a product of the western culture I am submersed in. If I'm not part of something big or established - an important role at work, and key player at church, actively involved in leadership of some capacity - I am nobody. I question and struggle and wonder where and how to find the parity between God's grace and sovereign hand in guiding my life, and my own initiative and choice to explore and try new things and the ability to ask the right questions. That balance has, wrongly or rightly, kept me exhausted the last several years, much more so in the last months.
I find myself to be quite elusive these days. Floating in and out of different versions of myself, inconsistent at best, discovering who I am, and longing to stand on ground that feels so far away. There are days I'm proud of this journey - when I feel skinny and free and like a brand new purple purse just changed my world. And there are also days when the work outs take a turn for the worse, when I feel completely behind, and awkward with plenty of clumsy, and truly slow at life. The core of this is an inability to make peace with who I am in holistically, and a state of gracelessness to not having answers as to why I can't seem to work things out.
And so, on the eve of a milestone birthday, I am again tempted to wrestle with this. These ideas of not being enough, pretty enough, smart enough, interesting, or talented or inventive enough. I choose to cling to these words out of Ephesians today
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen
I long to experience these words. Rooted. Established. Strength flowing into my inner being. Christ dwelling richly. To be filled with the fullness of God. To know love that surpasses all understanding, all chaos. To grasp the truths that I so desperately want my heart to soak in.
These are beautiful words that evoke the pain out my heart today.
There is more happening within the undercurrents of my life than I am aware of.
This year, my 25th year of life, I want to be marked by learning to celebrate. To celebrate the small, the large, the areas of life I see moving and God guiding. To celebrate with good food, and good wine, and good friends. I want this year to be remembered as the year I learned to be - the discipline of ruthless, and sometimes violent, trust that the Father, who cares for me and sees me, actually takes notice of me and has a plan for my small life I can't see. Learning to let my soul be well with not figuring "it" out, whatever it may be. To learn to be alone and content within my own skin - to be comfortable within this mess and longing and groaning that marks everything I see. This I call to mind and therefore have hope: that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. The God of the universe has made no mistake.
Something deep in me, a truth that clings to every fiber of my being completely not of my own accord, keeps me at rest in the violent restlessness. And that is this; He has done all things well.
Here's to another year my friends. The goodness of God does indeed dwell here.
Navigating the job world and the dating world and the self-discovery/self-esteem world was something I wasn't ever really prepared for. Mostly because it had always come easily and/or I had no idea how easy I really had it. But now, it's just been......well.....its certainly been something. Perhaps one day, when I'm on the other side of this season of life, I will have some wisdom and insight worth sharing.
As a woman who has tried and succeeded and failed and felt close and felt a million miles in her relationship with the Lord, many of those extremes experienced in the last couple weeks, I forced my self to get away, to take a timeout. Away from a job that seems hopeless, away from examining a future that feels hopeless, away from myself which lives out hopeless....just away and permission to not carry the weight so personally, so closely. So I tossed some clothes and a candle and half a bottle of my favorite sauvignon cabernet, and headed to the beach. A little b&b with my deck overlooking the ocean and a Jacuzzi tub - I was in great shape. I journaled, read, cried, journaled some more, watched a movie, napped, walked the beach to the point my face was wind burned, slept, and took 4 baths all within a 16 hour span. On a complete side note, bloated starfish totally freak me out. All that to say, it was the first time in a while that I had taken so much time to myself, and I discovered that the Lord had so much to say.
I'm relearning how to be alone. It doesn't come natural to me anymore. There is a deep fear within me who loudly suggests that to not be intentional about moving forward means that you are moving backwards, failing, and causing inevitable regrets down the road. The fear is intrinsically attached to my identity - a product of the western culture I am submersed in. If I'm not part of something big or established - an important role at work, and key player at church, actively involved in leadership of some capacity - I am nobody. I question and struggle and wonder where and how to find the parity between God's grace and sovereign hand in guiding my life, and my own initiative and choice to explore and try new things and the ability to ask the right questions. That balance has, wrongly or rightly, kept me exhausted the last several years, much more so in the last months.
I find myself to be quite elusive these days. Floating in and out of different versions of myself, inconsistent at best, discovering who I am, and longing to stand on ground that feels so far away. There are days I'm proud of this journey - when I feel skinny and free and like a brand new purple purse just changed my world. And there are also days when the work outs take a turn for the worse, when I feel completely behind, and awkward with plenty of clumsy, and truly slow at life. The core of this is an inability to make peace with who I am in holistically, and a state of gracelessness to not having answers as to why I can't seem to work things out.
And so, on the eve of a milestone birthday, I am again tempted to wrestle with this. These ideas of not being enough, pretty enough, smart enough, interesting, or talented or inventive enough. I choose to cling to these words out of Ephesians today
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen
I long to experience these words. Rooted. Established. Strength flowing into my inner being. Christ dwelling richly. To be filled with the fullness of God. To know love that surpasses all understanding, all chaos. To grasp the truths that I so desperately want my heart to soak in.
These are beautiful words that evoke the pain out my heart today.
There is more happening within the undercurrents of my life than I am aware of.
This year, my 25th year of life, I want to be marked by learning to celebrate. To celebrate the small, the large, the areas of life I see moving and God guiding. To celebrate with good food, and good wine, and good friends. I want this year to be remembered as the year I learned to be - the discipline of ruthless, and sometimes violent, trust that the Father, who cares for me and sees me, actually takes notice of me and has a plan for my small life I can't see. Learning to let my soul be well with not figuring "it" out, whatever it may be. To learn to be alone and content within my own skin - to be comfortable within this mess and longing and groaning that marks everything I see. This I call to mind and therefore have hope: that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. The God of the universe has made no mistake.
Something deep in me, a truth that clings to every fiber of my being completely not of my own accord, keeps me at rest in the violent restlessness. And that is this; He has done all things well.
Here's to another year my friends. The goodness of God does indeed dwell here.
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